Angelu de Leon's Daughters Always Knew They Had Different Dads

Angelu de Leon isn't afraid to look back to her days of being a solo parent to two daughters before finding her Mr. Right and tying the knot in 2010.

The actress is a mother to three kids: Nicole, 19 whose father is actor Joko Diaz; Louise, 16, whose dad is businessman Jojo Manlongat; and Rafa, 6, who is the son of Angelu's husband, Lorenzo “Wowie” Rivera.

The 38-year-old actress relates that from the very start, she never hid the truth from her kids, no matter how ugly it was.

“They knew they had different fathers. They knew I was a single mom — they knew everything,” she relates at the press conference when ongoing GMA-7 teleserye The Stepdaughters was launched last February 4.

For Angelu, the truth should not be sugarcoated, particularly in the case of her daughters. She saw it as her way to “protect” her kids.

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In retrospect, Angelu says she doesn’t know how she survived that time when she had to be a single parent. “You know, looking back, grabe, it’s by the grace of God [that I managed]. It’s hard to be a single parent.”

She also credits people around her, including her children, for supporting her to get through that difficult period. At 19, when she became a mom the first time, Angelu was growing up herself. But she also needed to be a provider.

“If I’m being honest, I wasn’t the nurturing [type],” she confesses of that time. There was a point that she felt she had to make up for missing her youth.

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Smart Parenting candidly asked Angelu if Nicole and Louise are close to their respective dads.

“Ah, no. wala talagang relationship in a sense…” then she interjected, “But with Joko, with my panganay, at the age kasi of 13, when marunong na siyang mag-phone, I told him [Joko] na silang dalawa na ang mag-usap. So there were times na nagkikita sila.”

Angelu only had a strict rule with Nicole and Joko. “Ang akin lang, bawal ang overnight.”

She proceeds to explain, “Nung bata pa, ha… kasi nagkakaroon ng, ‘Bakit sa bahay ni Daddy, ganito, ganon? ‘Yun yung gusto kong iwasan. Kasi, I have my set of rules in the house, and at the end of the day, this is where you go home.”

Angelu says she has “given up” the father role and bequeathed it to her husband whom she describes as a good provider.

Angelu and Wowie were badminton buddies, whose friendship blossomed into a relationship around 2009 after three years of friendship.

They got engaged in June 2010 and got married three months later with her daughters’ approval, of course.